Details

Felix Schaffert | Switzerland | 2015 | 17 m

German with English Subtitles

Both mother and daughter have the same blond hair down to their hips, wear the same clothes and the interior of their bedrooms are identical. Harmony, a nine-year-old girl, lives in symbiosis with her mother. Strolling down the streets in their designer clothes they’re real eye-catchers. Their middle-class apartment from the 60s contrasts their elegant appearance. The girl must drink a glass of milk every evening, into which the mother mixes a soporific. But Harmony wants to know what happens at night: The girl refuses to drink the milk. Unnoticed by the mother, she manages to pour it away. Repeatedly, Harmony watches what her mother does with the man at night: He plays with her blond hair, and his arousal grows. Harmony imitates what she saw with the neighbor’s boy, who comes over for a visit with his mother, and she feels the same disgust as her mother. It is obvious to Harmony that she will get rid of the man and take her mother back all for herself: She makes a bold move, and cuts off her sleeping mothers hair. Pure despair befalls the otherwise emotionally cold mother as she wakes up in the morning and sees her ruined hair in the mirror. The mother thinks it was the suitors’ doing. Harmony’s plan was a success. The symbiosis begins to crumble. But the girl is plagued by her guilty conscience. Seeking intimacy, Harmony takes the hair out from a hiding place under the bed – She caresses it like a stuffed animal. But she falls asleep, with the evidence in her arms. The mother, also in search of intimacy, enters Harmony’s room. Just as she moves in to pet her head, the mother notices the hair in the arms of her daughter. It becomes clear to the mother: Her daughter must make the same sacrifice: She cuts off the girls’ hair, and the symbiosis has been restored. At least on the outside.